Josh Goller

Josh Goller
Josh Goller sprouted in Wisconsin soil, but the winds carried him to the gloom and damp of the Pacific Northwest. He now resides in Oregon where he enjoys driving through fog and listening to raccoons fight on his roof. His favorite color is not visible to the human eye.

Gone (March 20, 2009. Issue 15. The DirtyDirty.) They had taken her away without much fuss. A quick check for vitals - even though her skin had turned purple and her limbs wooden - a few questions for him, and a zipper pull over her waxy face. That’s all it took for them to haul her away, with one of his own kidneys in tow. They hadn’t even bothered to turn on the siren. The funeral home had given him hell. He hadn’t even realized they still buried people in unmarked graves, but he’d dug in his heels and convinced them to burn the body and to allow him a few months to scrape together the dough. He didn’t spread the ashes or anything — he wasn’t some new age hippy — but if he was expected to fork up cold cash for that brass pot and some soot he was going to damn well keep the thing. But when he brought her home, he hadn’t known quite where to put her. He couldn’t bear the sight of her resting on the table or on top of the TV, but it hadn’t felt right to hide her away in some closet or down with the canning jars in the basement either. He settled on wedging her in the space between the seats of his F150, behind his tackle box, and tried his best to forget about her. * He could barely dial the phone. Pain spurted from the center of his left palm, where he’d hit it with a sledge at Cascade ten months prior, and radiated out like a sunburst, his fingertips ready to split open. The hurt started again after they took her away, and hadn’t let up in the three weeks since. The pain was unpredictable, shifty, slogging down his arm in oozing rivulets, then jumping across his chest to his other arm, to his spine, shooting down to his surgical scar, pulsing beneath the skin behind his ears. He couldn’t predict where the pain would end up next. But with curled fingers he managed to dial the 800 number on the back of the frayed business card. “I need to talk to someone about my workman’s comp,” he said, gritting his teeth. “Do you know your claim number, sir?” “No, don’t got that.” “Well, what is your last name?” “Murrey.” “And your first?” “Bill.” “Bill Murray? Like the actor?” He sighed and ran his free hand across the hard smoothness of his bald scalp. “Just not spelled the same.” The pain retracted into a concentrated point that bored through the center of his palm. He struggled to unscrew the medicine bottle cap, but he got it open. He popped a few aspirin in his mouth and began to chew the chalky tablets as the adjuster looked up his information. “And what can I help you with, Bill?” “I got to go back and see Dr. Blumton, my hand’s flaring up again. I can’t live like this. Something’s got to be done.” Keyboard clicking echoed through the earpiece. “I’m sorry, Bill, but I see here that your claim was closed six months ago.” “Well, I ain’t fixed yet. How can you go and close my claim, this happened at work. This is workman’s comp. I got broke at work, so workman’s comp’s got to fix me. Pretty fucking simple if you ask me.” “Your claim was for a left hand contusion, sir. And Dr. Blumton says that’s resolved. Your claim is closed. I’m sorry, we can’t authorize another doctor’s visit.” “Christ, I’m not trying to pull one over on you. I’m an honest guy. My old man taught me hard work pays off, he didn’t raise no loafer and if he was still around he’d be the first one to tell you so. You can’t do this sort of thing to a working man.” Bill stood up from the couch and charged into the kitchen. RSD the doctor had called it. No specific cause. Bill hadn’t known what to make of that, but didn’t like the sound of it. When doctors call things by initials you know it’s bad. “I got nothing, you know that. First you cut off my disability pay. I can’t afford this place on my own. I’m eating bologna and hot dogs until they’re coming out my ears. An Ethiopian couldn’t live on what I got. Nobody’s going to hire me. Can’t even hold a fucking hammer. I ain’t asking you for much, just to see the doc. I got no other way to pay.” Bill glanced over at the cookie jar, a lime green, lopsided thing she’d made in a pottery class. The top didn’t fit quite right so the cookies always got stale. As the adjuster coldly reiterated her position, Bill walked over to the counter. He lifted the weighty jar, opened the cupboard, and shoved it into the dark. * “That’ll be $48.50.” Bill pulled out the two twenties he’d peeled from his dwindling wad of mattress cash and counted out the rest in coins, winding up forty cents short, but the clerk let it slide. The teenage clerk, shaggy-haired and acne pocked with an Adam’s apple actually rivaling the size of a Granny Smith, passed the carton to him. Bill tore open one end and pulled out a pack of Newport Lights. He tucked the oblong carton into the side pocket of his torn cargo pants. As he stepped outside, the muggy night air clung to him, stagnant and hot. His white shirt stuck with sweat to his back. A mosquito bit the side of his neck and he slapped it, hard. He ripped off the cellophane on his Newports and the thin film stuck to his fingers with static. He’d parked his pickup along the side of the building, by the surplus inventory shed where the employees parked. It wouldn’t be easily seen from the highway. They wouldn’t spot it there. Dr. Blumton had refused to see him again. He’d stopped in that afternoon, but was told the same thing they told him every time. No insurance, no treatment. He’d cussed out the receptionist, banging his fist on the front desk and spilling her coffee all over a bunch of papers that he hoped were important. They’d threatened to call the police if he didn’t leave. He’d stormed out feeling better. He wrestled for a spark with a yellow Bic in his left hand, a Newport dangling from his dry lips. He’d never liked menthols before. She’d smoked them, and he’d always ragged her for smoking a prissy cigarette. Marlboro Reds were his smokes, always had been. But after they took her away, he smoked the packs she’d left. The tarry mint flavor helped some, and he’d decided it was high time he tried something new. A tanker with its hose jammed into a valve in the concrete groaned. The highway was dead, no signs of civilization anywhere beyond the reach of the gas station bulbs. He winced. The pain was back now, but it was manageable. He could put it out of his mind if he tried hard enough. The lighter sparked but he couldn’t get a flame. He shook the damn thing and tossed it into the dirt. Squinting his eyes, he tucked his cig behind his ear. Something above him beeped as he pushed back through the glass door. He’d probably have to kill himself if he had to listen to that racket all day long. “Got some matches I can borrow from you?” Bill’s stomach gurgled, the smell of greasy chicken fingers and jo-jo potatoes taunted him. The clerk leaned back and peered under the counter. “Sorry, guy, nothing here. We got wood matches across from the motor oil down that aisle. $2.99, I think.” He trudged back out the door and sloughed through the gravel toward his truck. He needed to eat something, but the thought of plain wieners and white bread made his tongue taste like chemicals. A tall, clean cut man stood near Bill’s truck and spoke into a fancy cell phone. He wore grease-smudged Carhartt’s but his hair was spiked with some kind of hair product. He lowered his voice as Bill approached and started to wander the lot a little too aimlessly. A gold earring glinted in the fluorescent glow of the gas station lights. Bill opened his truck door and plucked the cigarette from behind his ear. He set his smoke in the cup holder, then pulled the carton from his pant leg pocket. Pain shot up the length of his left arm as he slid the carton between the seats, next to where he’d put her. He looked through the rear window at the man in the Carhartt’s, who kept staring back at the Ford. Bill slammed the door shut and turned to the man. He reached into the truck bed and yanked out a tire iron, squeezing the cold metal in both hands, forgetting any pain. “This is my truck, motherfucker!” He charged the man, his face flushing hot. The man flipped his cell phone closed and backed away, hands outstretched. “Whoa, pal. Let’s not get crazy here.” The man’s voice quivered as he spoke. “I worked long and hard to buy this truck. You ain’t taking it from me.” The man backtracked to what must have been his own car, a blue Mazda with a spoiler and a Jesus fish glued to the bumper. Bill stopped about twenty feet away. The man seemed to regain his nerve when within arm’s reach of his car. “Well, Mr. Murrey, when you don’t make a payment in four months, it’s not your truck anymore.” “My truck. You got me?” A tow rig pulled into the lot. The man straightened his spine and took a step forward. “If you make a few payments, then it may become your truck again. We can work with you on hammering out a new financing plan if you need. But you’ve got to get square with us first. I’ve got a mortgage to pay too, you know.” The tow truck parked in front of the station and a fat, bearded man in a gray tank top dropped from the driver’s seat, a phone to his ear. The repo man’s cell buzzed and flickered in his hand. “You take my truck and I ain’t got nothing left. My common law died. My landlord’s going to kick me out.” A searing jolt radiated through his hand as if the tire iron had been hooked to a car battery. He dropped the tool to the gravel. “Stan?” the tow truck driver yelled, scanning the parking lot but failing to spot them in the shadows alongside the building. “Just keep away from what’s mine.” Bill staggered back to the pickup. “It’s not your truck anymore, Mr. Murrey. I’m sorry. Come up with some money fast or we will repossess it.” Bill pulled himself into the vehicle. He punched the cigarette lighter knob into the dash. The cab smelled like manure and tobacco spit. A light breeze kicked up and bent stalks of alfalfa in the field in front of him, the horizon still maintaining a hint of purple where the sun had disappeared in the past hour. He angled the rearview to keep an eye on the repo man, who was talking things over with the tow truck driver. This had been a close one, but he’d wriggled free for now at least. They’d sent him a bunch of notices probably, but he’d never received them. The address was listed in her name. But they’d called, and he’d wrangled with them plenty. Still, this was the first time they followed through with a repo man. He was going to have to start hiding his truck. Bill flinched as the lighter popped in his dash. He snatched the cig from his cup holder and raised it to his lips. He promised himself those bastards wouldn’t get his truck. He would keep at least that. He pressed the glowing coil to his cigarette and the tobacco hissed as it ignited. He inhaled deeply, then blew out a plume of minty smoke into the cab, his hand throbbing. * Shattering glass pealed through the still night air. Bill pulled his elbow, padded by his balled t-shirt, from the broken window on his back door. They’d padlocked the front. He knew it was coming. He only wanted to collect a few things and he’d be gone. Most of the stuff in there was hers anyway and what use could it be now. He reached through the jagged hole. Touching the deadbolt, his arm shook with spasm. As he pulled it out, he caught the base of his thumb on a shard. He watched the blood well into a drop the size of a BB before breaking and streaming down his arm. He wiped the blood with his shirt, then sucked at the wound with its familiar coppery taste. He reached carefully through the broken window again and felt around for the deadbolt. His body lunged forward into the dark as the door fell open. Nothing happened when he flicked the light switch. Figured that they’d cut the power too. Navigating through the kitchen by memory, he made his way to the junk drawer by the fridge. He rummaged through it, feeling loose nails, spools of thread, ribbon, a measuring tape, and finally a flashlight. Dust particles floated in the light as he clicked on the beam. He made for the bedroom and, reaching the bed, lifted the mattress with his good hand. Blood smeared across the thin wad of bills. There wasn’t much left, barely enough for a few nights in a motel room. He’d try his sister’s. Even with the way things went down the last time he’d seen her she would have to take him in. They were blood. He stuffed the bills in his back pocket and walked back out into the kitchen. Sweat trickled down his forehead and into his muzzle of dark whiskers. The humidity had drawn the silver hairs on his bare chest and slight paunch into curly clusters. He walked to the closet and pulled out an old hunting canteen. The flashlight began to dim. He filled the canteen at the sink. As he screwed on the cap he realized there was little else worth taking. His landlord could keep everything for all he cared. He slung the canteen around his shoulder, tossed the useless flashlight into the dark, and trudged out the back door. Stopping to listen for any activity, he looked up at the gibbous moon segmented by a silhouetted tangle of thin tree branches. Frogs chirped from the marshland at the end of the field. A mosquito whined past his ear. He’d dropped the canteen into the passenger’s side wheel well and wiggled the key into the ignition before it dawned on him: his father’s Zippo. Empty of course, but it wasn’t the butane he was after. Back in the house, the floorboards creaked as he entered the dark living room. Without a flashlight he felt his way along the wall until his eyes could adjust to the dim blue light glowing through the mini-blinds. He pushed forward, barking his shin on the coffee table shrouded in the darkness. He groped around on the surface, pushing aside an overflowing ashtray and combing through her old magazines. The ashtray clattered to floor and the pain shot down to his knees, sharp and hot. Bill fell back on the couch and cursed aloud. He would have to wait until dawn. He didn’t even have a way to light the room. He hadn’t so much as looked at the couch since they took her away. His fingers crept to her spot and he ran his hand, now devoid of pain, across the indent in her cushion. He hadn’t thought anything about her not coming to bed that night, she often stayed up to watch Letterman, usually fell asleep there. She’d been doing so well, practically back to her old self in the two years since the transplant, since they’d put part of him inside her forever, keeping her alive. He could feel his heartbeat pulsing in his wormlike surgical scar as he sat there now. How could he have slept through something like that? When he’d found her there that morning, doubled over, forehead resting on the coffee table, she looked for a moment as though she were only tying her shoe. He’d actually asked her what she was doing. But she wouldn’t move. Then he saw the pinkish froth in the corner of her mouth and the puddle of rank fluid on the floor below. She was gone, even before they took her. The light in the windows was brightening, dawn was approaching, but the room was still far too dark to see anything. Raindrops pattered on the poorly insulated roof above, the sound amplified in the kitchen through the broken pane. A faint thunderclap rumbled in the distance. * Bill awoke on his side, his neck twisted, face pressed against the couch cushion. Sunlight streaked through the mini-blinds, spilling a zebra-print across the coffee table, the couch, his face. The cushion smelled of menthol, spilled coffee and cocoa butter. He sat up - his back stiff - and he ran his hands over the top of his head and down across his face. The Zippo lighter shimmered on the carpet at his feet like a coin on a sidewalk. The only thing his old man had kept from the nurses’ sticky fingers at the home. He picked up the lighter and dropped it into his cargo pocket. Standing, he gave the room the once over before making for the kitchen. He stopped in the bedroom and put on a clean shirt. A black scab oozed on his thumb, and he wiped it hard with his dirty shirt, then tossed the soiled tee onto the bed. Outside, the rain was coming down harder, the downspout spraying like a bath faucet. The Ford was still there, thank god, and he skittered to it – dodging a smattering of night crawlers out for a soak - without allowing himself to get too wet. His fingers tingled as he flipped on the wipers, and fiddled with the radio knob to combat the crackling static. He didn’t look at their house again as the pickup crept over the lumpy tire tracks back to the highway. The home he could never go back to. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing his sister, but figured she would be even less enthusiastic to see him. Hopefully she hadn’t taken back her jerk off husband, but Bill knew he probably wouldn’t be that lucky. Making his way down a straight stretch of road, cars zipped past in the opposite lane, and he felt the familiar urge to yank the wheel to the left. Ever since he was a 14-year old kid driving on the highway for the first time, he’d known that itch, foreseeing the piercing screech, the sparks, the twisted metal, the taste of copper, the impact to blot out everything. He squinted at an approaching car with something written in big white block decals on the hood. Where will you spend eternity? Bill watched the car whip past and studied the writing on its trunk in the rearview as it faded to a speck behind him. Some sort of scripture verse but he couldn’t make out what the hell it said. She’d taken him to church once, on Easter after the operation. Other than the sip of wine, he didn’t get much out of it, but it’d made her happy enough. She’d started doing things like that then. Crying during afternoon talk shows. Researching her family history on the computers at the library. Sending $10 a month to feed some orphan in Bangladesh. The impact rattled the cab at the same instant he saw a streak in front of him, like a thunderstorm that’s too close for comfort. The truck rumbled over something big as he hit the brakes. Tires screamed and the Ford jerked to a halt. A grey cloud billowed in the cab as the brass urn cracked against the dash and came to rest in the passenger wheel well. It spun around a couple times, then stopped. Bill coughed and looked down. He sat for a moment, arms outstretched on the wheel, letting the floating ash settle. Some of it clung to the fogged side windows, shading the cab, boxing him in. Rain pounded on the metal roof. From the rearview, he couldn’t see whatever he’d hit, but there was blood splattered on his hood and brown tufts of hair pinched in the compressed metal. With grey bits of her filling out his eyebrows and whiskers he looked like his old man in the mirror. He didn’t make any effort to scoop her back into the urn, just sneezed, and pushed the door open. Raindrops the size of June bugs stung his head and face as he pried himself from the truck. Muddied ash sloshed down his arms, dripped from his fingers, streamed into the corners of his mouth, tasting of char. He could hear nothing but the rain slapping the highway as he walked to the rear, his boots leaving brief grey prints. Lying at the bumper was a deer mangled with gore, its chest still rising and falling, the animal’s eyes black and moist, and wide open, its breath heaving out in frightened wheezes. Drawn to the dying animal, Bill knelt and rested his hand on its abdomen, fur and congealing blood clumped with ash between his fingers. He was there. He stroked its ears back along its head. A spotted fawn looked up at him from the drainage ditch, wobbling on stick legs as it stood in the racing water. Bill ran his hand down the length of the dying deer’s neck as the broken legs jerked. He slipped free a shard of headlight glass from the animal’s snout. Blood and ash poured down the asphalt toward the ditch. Bill stayed the long while it took the eyes to turn grey. The deer’s breathing slowed, and Bill cupped his left hand under its neck, lifting the head from the cold, wet pavement and holding it there until the breath stilled.

Josh Goller sprouted in Wisconsin soil, but the winds carried him to the gloom and damp of the Pacific Northwest. He now resides in Oregon where he enjoys driving through fog and listening to raccoons fight on his roof. His favorite color is not visible to the human eye.

Gone (March 20, 2009. Issue 15. The DirtyDirty.)

They had taken her away without much fuss. A quick check for vitals - even though her skin had turned purple and her limbs wooden - a few questions for him, and a zipper pull over her waxy face. That’s all it took for them to haul her away, with one of his own kidneys in tow. They hadn’t even bothered to turn on the siren.

The funeral home had given him hell. He hadn’t even realized they still buried people in unmarked graves, but he’d dug in his heels and convinced them to burn the body and to allow him a few months to scrape together the dough. He didn’t spread the ashes or anything — he wasn’t some new age hippy — but if he was expected to fork up cold cash for that brass pot and some soot he was going to damn well keep the thing. But when he brought her home, he hadn’t known quite where to put her. He couldn’t bear the sight of her resting on the table or on top of the TV, but it hadn’t felt right to hide her away in some closet or down with the canning jars in the basement either. He settled on wedging her in the space between the seats of his F150, behind his tackle box, and tried his best to forget about her.

He could barely dial the phone. Pain spurted from the center of his left palm, where he’d hit it with a sledge at Cascade ten months prior, and radiated out like a sunburst, his fingertips ready to split open. The hurt started again after they took her away, and hadn’t let up in the three weeks since. The pain was unpredictable, shifty, slogging down his arm in oozing rivulets, then jumping across his chest to his other arm, to his spine, shooting down to his surgical scar, pulsing beneath the skin behind his ears. He couldn’t predict where the pain would end up next. But with curled fingers he managed to dial the 800 number on the back of the frayed business card.

“I need to talk to someone about my workman’s comp,” he said, gritting his teeth.

“Do you know your claim number, sir?”

“No, don’t got that.”

“Well, what is your last name?”

“Murrey.”

“And your first?”

“Bill.”

“Bill Murray? Like the actor?”

He sighed and ran his free hand across the hard smoothness of his bald scalp.

“Just not spelled the same.”

The pain retracted into a concentrated point that bored through the center of his palm. He struggled to unscrew the medicine bottle cap, but he got it open. He popped a few aspirin in his mouth and began to chew the chalky tablets as the adjuster looked up his information.

“And what can I help you with, Bill?”

“I got to go back and see Dr. Blumton, my hand’s flaring up again. I can’t live like this. Something’s got to be done.”

Keyboard clicking echoed through the earpiece.

“I’m sorry, Bill, but I see here that your claim was closed six months ago.”

“Well, I ain’t fixed yet. How can you go and close my claim, this happened at work. This is workman’s comp. I got broke at work, so workman’s comp’s got to fix me. Pretty fucking simple if you ask me.”

“Your claim was for a left hand contusion, sir. And Dr. Blumton says that’s resolved. Your claim is closed. I’m sorry, we can’t authorize another doctor’s visit.”

“Christ, I’m not trying to pull one over on you. I’m an honest guy. My old man taught me hard work pays off, he didn’t raise no loafer and if he was still around he’d be the first one to tell you so. You can’t do this sort of thing to a working man.”

Bill stood up from the couch and charged into the kitchen. RSD the doctor had called it. No specific cause. Bill hadn’t known what to make of that, but didn’t like the sound of it. When doctors call things by initials you know it’s bad.

“I got nothing, you know that. First you cut off my disability pay. I can’t afford this place on my own. I’m eating bologna and hot dogs until they’re coming out my ears. An Ethiopian couldn’t live on what I got. Nobody’s going to hire me. Can’t even hold a fucking hammer. I ain’t asking you for much, just to see the doc. I got no other way to pay.”

Bill glanced over at the cookie jar, a lime green, lopsided thing she’d made in a pottery class. The top didn’t fit quite right so the cookies always got stale. As the adjuster coldly reiterated her position, Bill walked over to the counter. He lifted the weighty jar, opened the cupboard, and shoved it into the dark.

“That’ll be $48.50.”

Bill pulled out the two twenties he’d peeled from his dwindling wad of mattress cash and counted out the rest in coins, winding up forty cents short, but the clerk let it slide. The teenage clerk, shaggy-haired and acne pocked with an Adam’s apple actually rivaling the size of a Granny Smith, passed the carton to him. Bill tore open one end and pulled out a pack of Newport Lights. He tucked the oblong carton into the side pocket of his torn cargo pants.

As he stepped outside, the muggy night air clung to him, stagnant and hot. His white shirt stuck with sweat to his back. A mosquito bit the side of his neck and he slapped it, hard. He ripped off the cellophane on his Newports and the thin film stuck to his fingers with static. He’d parked his pickup along the side of the building, by the surplus inventory shed where the employees parked. It wouldn’t be easily seen from the highway. They wouldn’t spot it there.
Dr. Blumton had refused to see him again. He’d stopped in that afternoon, but was told the same thing they told him every time. No insurance, no treatment. He’d cussed out the receptionist, banging his fist on the front desk and spilling her coffee all over a bunch of papers that he hoped were important. They’d threatened to call the police if he didn’t leave. He’d stormed out feeling better.

He wrestled for a spark with a yellow Bic in his left hand, a Newport dangling from his dry lips. He’d never liked menthols before. She’d smoked them, and he’d always ragged her for smoking a prissy cigarette. Marlboro Reds were his smokes, always had been. But after they took her away, he smoked the packs she’d left. The tarry mint flavor helped some, and he’d decided it was high time he tried something new.

A tanker with its hose jammed into a valve in the concrete groaned. The highway was dead, no signs of civilization anywhere beyond the reach of the gas station bulbs. He winced. The pain was back now, but it was manageable. He could put it out of his mind if he tried hard enough. The lighter sparked but he couldn’t get a flame. He shook the damn thing and tossed it into the dirt. Squinting his eyes, he tucked his cig behind his ear. Something above him beeped as he pushed back through the glass door. He’d probably have to kill himself if he had to listen to that racket all day long.

“Got some matches I can borrow from you?”

Bill’s stomach gurgled, the smell of greasy chicken fingers and jo-jo potatoes taunted him. The clerk leaned back and peered under the counter.

“Sorry, guy, nothing here. We got wood matches across from the motor oil down that aisle. $2.99, I think.”

He trudged back out the door and sloughed through the gravel toward his truck. He needed to eat something, but the thought of plain wieners and white bread made his tongue taste like chemicals.

A tall, clean cut man stood near Bill’s truck and spoke into a fancy cell phone. He wore grease-smudged Carhartt’s but his hair was spiked with some kind of hair product. He lowered his voice as Bill approached and started to wander the lot a little too aimlessly. A gold earring glinted in the fluorescent glow of the gas station lights.

Bill opened his truck door and plucked the cigarette from behind his ear. He set his smoke in the cup holder, then pulled the carton from his pant leg pocket. Pain shot up the length of his left arm as he slid the carton between the seats, next to where he’d put her. He looked through the rear window at the man in the Carhartt’s, who kept staring back at the Ford.

Bill slammed the door shut and turned to the man. He reached into the truck bed and yanked out a tire iron, squeezing the cold metal in both hands, forgetting any pain.

“This is my truck, motherfucker!” He charged the man, his face flushing hot. The man flipped his cell phone closed and backed away, hands outstretched.

“Whoa, pal. Let’s not get crazy here.” The man’s voice quivered as he spoke.

“I worked long and hard to buy this truck. You ain’t taking it from me.”

The man backtracked to what must have been his own car, a blue Mazda with a spoiler and a Jesus fish glued to the bumper. Bill stopped about twenty feet away. The man seemed to regain his nerve when within arm’s reach of his car.

“Well, Mr. Murrey, when you don’t make a payment in four months, it’s not your truck anymore.”

“My truck. You got me?”

A tow rig pulled into the lot. The man straightened his spine and took a step forward.

“If you make a few payments, then it may become your truck again. We can work with you on hammering out a new financing plan if you need. But you’ve got to get square with us first. I’ve got a mortgage to pay too, you know.”

The tow truck parked in front of the station and a fat, bearded man in a gray tank top dropped from the driver’s seat, a phone to his ear. The repo man’s cell buzzed and flickered in his hand.

“You take my truck and I ain’t got nothing left. My common law died. My landlord’s going to kick me out.”

A searing jolt radiated through his hand as if the tire iron had been hooked to a car battery. He dropped the tool to the gravel.

“Stan?” the tow truck driver yelled, scanning the parking lot but failing to spot them in the shadows alongside the building.

“Just keep away from what’s mine.”

Bill staggered back to the pickup.

“It’s not your truck anymore, Mr. Murrey. I’m sorry. Come up with some money fast or we will repossess it.”

Bill pulled himself into the vehicle. He punched the cigarette lighter knob into the dash. The cab smelled like manure and tobacco spit. A light breeze kicked up and bent stalks of alfalfa in the field in front of him, the horizon still maintaining a hint of purple where the sun had disappeared in the past hour. He angled the rearview to keep an eye on the repo man, who was talking things over with the tow truck driver. This had been a close one, but he’d wriggled free for now at least. They’d sent him a bunch of notices probably, but he’d never received them. The address was listed in her name. But they’d called, and he’d wrangled with them plenty. Still, this was the first time they followed through with a repo man. He was going to have to start hiding his truck.

Bill flinched as the lighter popped in his dash. He snatched the cig from his cup holder and raised it to his lips. He promised himself those bastards wouldn’t get his truck. He would keep at least that. He pressed the glowing coil to his cigarette and the tobacco hissed as it ignited. He inhaled deeply, then blew out a plume of minty smoke into the cab, his hand throbbing.

Shattering glass pealed through the still night air. Bill pulled his elbow, padded by his balled t-shirt, from the broken window on his back door. They’d padlocked the front. He knew it was coming. He only wanted to collect a few things and he’d be gone. Most of the stuff in there was hers anyway and what use could it be now.

He reached through the jagged hole. Touching the deadbolt, his arm shook with spasm. As he pulled it out, he caught the base of his thumb on a shard. He watched the blood well into a drop the size of a BB before breaking and streaming down his arm.

He wiped the blood with his shirt, then sucked at the wound with its familiar coppery taste. He reached carefully through the broken window again and felt around for the deadbolt. His body lunged forward into the dark as the door fell open. Nothing happened when he flicked the light switch. Figured that they’d cut the power too.

Navigating through the kitchen by memory, he made his way to the junk drawer by the fridge. He rummaged through it, feeling loose nails, spools of thread, ribbon, a measuring tape, and finally a flashlight. Dust particles floated in the light as he clicked on the beam. He made for the bedroom and, reaching the bed, lifted the mattress with his good hand. Blood smeared across the thin wad of bills. There wasn’t much left, barely enough for a few nights in a motel room. He’d try his sister’s. Even with the way things went down the last time he’d seen her she would have to take him in. They were blood.

He stuffed the bills in his back pocket and walked back out into the kitchen. Sweat trickled down his forehead and into his muzzle of dark whiskers. The humidity had drawn the silver hairs on his bare chest and slight paunch into curly clusters. He walked to the closet and pulled out an old hunting canteen. The flashlight began to dim. He filled the canteen at the sink. As he screwed on the cap he realized there was little else worth taking. His landlord could keep everything for all he cared.

He slung the canteen around his shoulder, tossed the useless flashlight into the dark, and trudged out the back door. Stopping to listen for any activity, he looked up at the gibbous moon segmented by a silhouetted tangle of thin tree branches. Frogs chirped from the marshland at the end of the field. A mosquito whined past his ear.

He’d dropped the canteen into the passenger’s side wheel well and wiggled the key into the ignition before it dawned on him: his father’s Zippo. Empty of course, but it wasn’t the butane he was after. Back in the house, the floorboards creaked as he entered the dark living room. Without a flashlight he felt his way along the wall until his eyes could adjust to the dim blue light glowing through the mini-blinds. He pushed forward, barking his shin on the coffee table shrouded in the darkness. He groped around on the surface, pushing aside an overflowing ashtray and combing through her old magazines.

The ashtray clattered to floor and the pain shot down to his knees, sharp and hot. Bill fell back on the couch and cursed aloud. He would have to wait until dawn. He didn’t even have a way to light the room.

He hadn’t so much as looked at the couch since they took her away. His fingers crept to her spot and he ran his hand, now devoid of pain, across the indent in her cushion. He hadn’t thought anything about her not coming to bed that night, she often stayed up to watch Letterman, usually fell asleep there. She’d been doing so well, practically back to her old self in the two years since the transplant, since they’d put part of him inside her forever, keeping her alive. He could feel his heartbeat pulsing in his wormlike surgical scar as he sat there now. How could he have slept through something like that?

When he’d found her there that morning, doubled over, forehead resting on the coffee table, she looked for a moment as though she were only tying her shoe. He’d actually asked her what she was doing. But she wouldn’t move. Then he saw the pinkish froth in the corner of her mouth and the puddle of rank fluid on the floor below. She was gone, even before they took her.

The light in the windows was brightening, dawn was approaching, but the room was still far too dark to see anything. Raindrops pattered on the poorly insulated roof above, the sound amplified in the kitchen through the broken pane. A faint thunderclap rumbled in the distance.

Bill awoke on his side, his neck twisted, face pressed against the couch cushion. Sunlight streaked through the mini-blinds, spilling a zebra-print across the coffee table, the couch, his face. The cushion smelled of menthol, spilled coffee and cocoa butter. He sat up - his back stiff - and he ran his hands over the top of his head and down across his face. The Zippo lighter shimmered on the carpet at his feet like a coin on a sidewalk. The only thing his old man had kept from the nurses’ sticky fingers at the home.

He picked up the lighter and dropped it into his cargo pocket. Standing, he gave the room the once over before making for the kitchen. He stopped in the bedroom and put on a clean shirt. A black scab oozed on his thumb, and he wiped it hard with his dirty shirt, then tossed the soiled tee onto the bed.

Outside, the rain was coming down harder, the downspout spraying like a bath faucet. The Ford was still there, thank god, and he skittered to it – dodging a smattering of night crawlers out for a soak - without allowing himself to get too wet. His fingers tingled as he flipped on the wipers, and fiddled with the radio knob to combat the crackling static. He didn’t look at their house again as the pickup crept over the lumpy tire tracks back to the highway. The home he could never go back to.

He wasn’t looking forward to seeing his sister, but figured she would be even less enthusiastic to see him. Hopefully she hadn’t taken back her jerk off husband, but Bill knew he probably wouldn’t be that lucky. Making his way down a straight stretch of road, cars zipped past in the opposite lane, and he felt the familiar urge to yank the wheel to the left. Ever since he was a 14-year old kid driving on the highway for the first time, he’d known that itch, foreseeing the piercing screech, the sparks, the twisted metal, the taste of copper, the impact to blot out everything.

He squinted at an approaching car with something written in big white block decals on the hood. Where will you spend eternity? Bill watched the car whip past and studied the writing on its trunk in the rearview as it faded to a speck behind him. Some sort of scripture verse but he couldn’t make out what the hell it said. She’d taken him to church once, on Easter after the operation. Other than the sip of wine, he didn’t get much out of it, but it’d made her happy enough. She’d started doing things like that then. Crying during afternoon talk shows. Researching her family history on the computers at the library. Sending $10 a month to feed some orphan in Bangladesh.

The impact rattled the cab at the same instant he saw a streak in front of him, like a thunderstorm that’s too close for comfort. The truck rumbled over something big as he hit the brakes. Tires screamed and the Ford jerked to a halt. A grey cloud billowed in the cab as the brass urn cracked against the dash and came to rest in the passenger wheel well. It spun around a couple times, then stopped. Bill coughed and looked down.

He sat for a moment, arms outstretched on the wheel, letting the floating ash settle. Some of it clung to the fogged side windows, shading the cab, boxing him in. Rain pounded on the metal roof. From the rearview, he couldn’t see whatever he’d hit, but there was blood splattered on his hood and brown tufts of hair pinched in the compressed metal. With grey bits of her filling out his eyebrows and whiskers he looked like his old man in the mirror. He didn’t make any effort to scoop her back into the urn, just sneezed, and pushed the door open.

Raindrops the size of June bugs stung his head and face as he pried himself from the truck. Muddied ash sloshed down his arms, dripped from his fingers, streamed into the corners of his mouth, tasting of char. He could hear nothing but the rain slapping the highway as he walked to the rear, his boots leaving brief grey prints. Lying at the bumper was a deer mangled with gore, its chest still rising and falling, the animal’s eyes black and moist, and wide open, its breath heaving out in frightened wheezes.

Drawn to the dying animal, Bill knelt and rested his hand on its abdomen, fur and congealing blood clumped with ash between his fingers. He was there. He stroked its ears back along its head. A spotted fawn looked up at him from the drainage ditch, wobbling on stick legs as it stood in the racing water. Bill ran his hand down the length of the dying deer’s neck as the broken legs jerked. He slipped free a shard of headlight glass from the animal’s snout.

Blood and ash poured down the asphalt toward the ditch. Bill stayed the long while it took the eyes to turn grey. The deer’s breathing slowed, and Bill cupped his left hand under its neck, lifting the head from the cold, wet pavement and holding it there until the breath stilled.